Bill Ayers

Categories

Weather Underground

SDS

revolutionary

Politics/Government

organizing

History

Education

Democracy

Community Building

Children's Rights

Activism

1960's

Bill Ayers, Distinguished Professor of Education and Senior University Scholar at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), and founder of both the Small Schools Workshop and the Center for Youth and Society, teaches courses in interpretive and qualitative research, urban school change, and teaching and the modern predicament. A graduate of the University of Michigan, the Bank Street College of Education, Bennington College, and Teachers College, Columbia University, Ayers has written extensively about social justice, democracy and education, the cultural contexts of schooling, and teaching as an essentially intellectual, ethical, and political enterprise.

Ayers worked with Mayor Richard M. Daley and a wide range of activists and civic leaders in shaping Chicago’s school reform agenda, and was one of three co-authors of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge , a 1995 initiative that brought $49.2 million over five years for public school reform, and in 1997 he was named Citizen of the Year in Chicago. Since 1999 he has served on the board of directors of the Woods Fund of Chicago, an anti-poverty, philanthropic foundation established as the Woods Charitable Fund in 1941, and was chair of the board for three years. He is vice-president of the curriculum division of the American Educational Research Association, and a member of the executive committee of the UIC Faculty Senate.

William Ayers’ articles have appeared in many journals including the Harvard Educational Review, the Journal of Teacher Education, Teachers College Record, Rethinking Schools, The Nation, Educational Leadership, the New York Times and the Cambridge Journal of Education. His books include A Kind and Just Parent: The Children of Juvenile Court (Beacon Press, 1997), Fugitive Days: A Memoir (Beacon Press, 2001, 2008), The Good Preschool Teacher: Six Teachers Reflect on Their Lives, (Teachers College Press, 1989), and To Teach: The Journey of a Teacher, (Teachers College Press, 1993) which was named Book of the Year in 1993 by Kappa Delta Pi, and won the Witten Award for Distinguished Work in Biography and Autobiography in 1995. Edited books include: To Become a Teacher: Making a Difference in Children’s Lives (Teachers College Press, 1995); with Janet Miller, A Light in Dark Times: Maxine Greene and the Unfinished Conversation (Teachers College Press, 1997); with Pat Ford, City Kids/City Teachers: Reports from the Front Row (The New Press, 1996,2008); with Jean Ann Hunt and Therese Quinn, Teaching for Social Justice: A Democracy and Education Reader (The New Press and Teachers College Press, 1998); with Mike Klonsky and Gabrielle Lyon, A Simple Justice: The Challenge of Small Schools (Teachers College Press, 2000); with Rick Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, Zero Tolerance: Resisting the Drive for Punishment (The New Press, 2001); and with Bernardine Dohrn and Jeff Jones, Sing a Battle Song: The Revolutionary Poetry, Statements, and Communiqués of the Weather Underground 1970 - 1974 (Seven Stories Press, 2006). Recent books include, On the Side of the Child: Summerhill Revisited (Teachers College Press, 2003), Teaching the Personal and the Political: Essays on Hope and Justice (Teachers College Press, 2004), and Teaching Toward Freedom: Moral Commitment and Ethical Action in the Classroom (Beacon Press, 2004); with Gloria Ladson-Billings, Pedro Noguera, and Gregory Michie, City Kids/City Schools: More Reports From the Front Row ( The New Press, 2008); and with Bernardine Dohrn, Race Course: Against White Supremacy (Third World Press, 2009). He lives in Hyde Park, Chicago with his wife, Bernardine Dohrn.

--++--

For booking availability and press inquiries:
Please contact Bill Ayer's speaker agents at the Evil Twin Booking Agency.

email: Liz Cole and Scott Beibin [ info (at) eviltwinbooking (dot) com ]
+1.215.473.0308 | eviltwinbooking.com

Evil Twin Booking Agency p.o. box 30726 philadelphia pa 19104 usa

--++--